“Why Do We Have to Go Away?”: A Beginning Exploration into the Lived Experience of Three MotherScholars Imagining Possibilities in the Time of COVID-19

ABSTRACT In this time of COVID-19, our public and private spaces have come together in unprecedented ways, giving rise to unique challenges and new opportunities to synergize maternal and academic spaces. We use narrative inquiry to explore our lived experiences as LDS MotherScholars by conducting three story cycles, using prompts about the past, present, and imagined possibilities for the future. Specifically, we looked for ways the emerging COVID-19 pandemic provided opportunities for us to reimagine harmonizing our lives across home and workspaces. Stories revealed the logistical and emotional tensions inherent in MotherScholarship, pointing to an urgent high-stakes sense of potential failure in both arenas. Our analyses identified patterns of hiding/compartmentalizing parts of self, as well as similarities between motherhood and scholarship. Using Standpoint theory, we rejected the notion of ”balance” as not useful (or real) as we re-envisioned our future lives as MotherScholars being ”braided” across spaces that include both motherhood and scholarship. During COVID-19, moments of grace have emerged that illuminate new possibilities and opportunities to enter a third space in order to confront and challenge oppressive androcentric assumptions and re-envision our work as MotherScholars.